Salman Rushdie Midnight's children Salman Rushdie Midnight's ...

happened to those who misbehave with 'the saints? 'Ask: was this statue n
ot seen in several villages simultaneously and does that prove fraud, or a
further miracle? 'You know I can't ask anyone,' Padma howls… but I, feeli
ng my fury subside, am making no more revelations tonight.
Baldly, then: Mary Pereira left us, and went to her mother in Goa. But Alic
e Pereira stayed; Alice remained in Ahmed Sinai's office, and typed, and fe
tched snacks and fizzy drinks.
As for me at the end of the mourning period for my uncle Hanif, I entered m
y second exile.
Movements performed by pepperpots
I was obliged to come to the conclusion that Shiva, my rival, my changeling
brother, could no longer be admitted into the forum of my mind; for reason
s which were, I admit, ignoble. I was afraid he would discover what I was s
ure I could not conceal from him the secrets of our birth. Shiva, for whom
the world was things, for whom history could only be explained as the conti
nuing struggle of oneself against the crowd, would certainly insist on clai
ming his birthright; and, aghast at the very notion of my knock kneed antag
onist replacing me in the blue room of my childhood while I, perforce, walk
ed morosely off the two storey hillock to enter the northern slums; refusin
g to accept that the prophecy of Ramram Seth had been intended for Winkie's
boy, that it was to Shiva that Prime Ministers had written, and for Shiva
that fishermen pointed out to sea… placing, in short, a far higher value on
my eleven year old sonship than on mere blood, I resolved that my destruct
ive, violent alter ego should never again enter the increasingly fractious
councils of the Midnight Children's Conference; that I would guard my secre
t which had once been Mary's with my very life.
There were nights, at this time, when I avoided convening the Conference at
all not because of the unsatisfactory turn it had taken, but simply becaus
e I knew it would take time, and cool blood, to erect a barrier around my n
ew knowledge which could deny it to the Children; eventually, I was confide
nt, I would manage this… but I was afraid of Shiva. Most ferocious and powe
rful of the Children, he would penetrate where others could not go… At any
rate, I avoided my fellow Children; and then suddenly it was too late, beca
use, having exiled Shiva, I found myself hurled into an exile from which I
was incapable of contacting my more than five hundred colleagues: I was flu
ng across the Partition created frontier into Pakistan.
Late in September 1958, the mourning period for my uncle Hanif Aziz came t
o an end; and, miraculously, the dust cloud which had enveloped us was set
tled by a merciful shower of rain. When we had bathed and put on newly was
hed clothes and switched on the ceiling fans, we emerged from bathrooms fi